Caught between ISIS-besieged Kobani and unwelcome in Turkey, an unarmed Kurdish brigade guards the Turkey-Syria border. The volunteers’ problems are not only with Islamic State militants – Turkish troops are also resolved to keep the brigade away.

The Kurdish volunteers
can’t count on the Turkish army, who has been keeping close watch
on the taskforce, to protect them from the Islamic State, also
known as ISIS/ISIL. Talking to RT, the group’s head, Fadile
Bayram accused Turkish forces of waging attacks on the
volunteers.

“We don’t carry weapons. We are here as a moral voice to show
the world what is happening. We make the Turkish army angry, and
they’ve attacked us with tear gas more than a hundred
times,” he said.

Frustrated and frightened, volunteers showed resilience in the
face of the Islamic State militants’ atrocities and roadblocks
from the Turkish police.

“I tried so many times to cross the border but the Turkish
police stopped us,” Zariah Kabak, a 90-year-old woman
volunteer told RT’s Paula Slier. “I am ready to take a weapon
to defend the Kurdish people. God gave us power. We can fight
ISIS.”

Dozens of guards work in shifts throughout the night to monitor
the activities of Turkish border police.

A resident of Zwahani,
the closest accessible point to the Turkish border, Abdullah,
spoke to RT without revealing his last name. He described the
dangers in the region posed by ISIS.

“ISIS are always coming to the cars and trying to steal them.
They try to take them and fit them with TNT and explosives so
they can explode them inside Kobani," he said. “Three
days ago they captured two old men that were inside a car and
tried to kidnap them.”

Turkish president Recep
Tayyip Erdogan is reluctant to support Kurds in Kobani because of
their link to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a party
advocating Kurdish self-rule in southern Turkey for the last 30
years.

When the US recently airdropped weapons and supplies to aid
Kurdish militias defending Kobani, the Syrian city besieged by
the ISIS since mid-September, US ally Turkey disapproved of the
move.

Until Turkey sealed its border against the influx of Kurds
fleeing the beleaguered Syrian city, thousands had entered the
country and settled in refugee camps near the border.